A Courier's Story
by Skinnyboy96
Summary: Courier Six has survived a gunshot to the head. Now, to track down the man who killed him, he'll need the help of friendly people from all over the Mojave. But it will take tolls on him, and his new companions. Rated M for later chapters.


**A/N: Greetings fellow fanfictioners! This is a brand new story that I've written just for you! Take a look at it and find out for yourself if it's worth continuing!**

_**Prologue: A Kick in the Head**_

_The Courier_

The Courier walked brusquely down the cracked asphalt road. He had been traveling for about a day and a half now. He has left Primm about noon a day ago. The second night of travel was coming upon him when he saw a town. According to his map, the town was called Goodsprings. Being able to read was one of the rare abilities that anyone could have had in the wasteland. He was strutting along in the sunset, and a man appeared ahead of him. A Khan by the looks of him, a red haired mohawk with a bandana on his forehead. He looked like trouble, but this courier knew that making any sudden moves with a Khan could lead to death. He came up, almost 20 feet from the Khan, and then he felt a sharp pain in the back of his head, falling forward, and then all went black.

_The Sniper_

It was nightfall already. The sniper was just sitting down to take watch from his partner. God he hated being here, but he couldn't leave. Not until he found out who had sold her. Who had forced him to do the unthinkable. Pushing out those thoughts, the sniper focused to the east. Those damn legionnaires that were coming from that way. Last he'd heard, they had taken Nelson, which was just across from Forlorn Hope. Gunshot. He heard a gunshot. Miles off to the northeast. He turned his rifle in the direction of the shot, to the left out of the dinosaur-turned-sniper's nest. With his high- powered scope he could just make out the flash of another shot, and then he heard the sound of that shot.

_The Scribe_

The girl sat in under the overpass, clothed in what looked like burlap robes and hood. She sat just across from a boy with a peculiar headset, one that took away "headaches" as he called them. He sat up with a jerk. She stared at him, wondering what was going on. His eyes were wide, and he looked as though he were about to have a seizure. Then he open his mouth.

"Nine cards stand out from the deck. All from a different past. Past will come into present. The wild card has entered the hand. All roads wind down to one end. Six is upon you. Forecast: Cloudy with a chance of courier." The child snapped out of whatever trance or vision he had been in. The girl stared back at him, and the boy looked almost embarrassed. "Sorry if I did anything weird. My medicine doesn't work sometimes." He laid back down, and , frightful of what was to come, the girl walked to the top of the overpass, finding somewhere else to sleep for the night.

_The Mechanic_

The ghoul typed some notes into the terminal. His "digital diary" was all that kept him from going insane in this super mutant infested radio station. How much longer was he going to be a prisoner? That lady super mutant was too schizophrenic, even for a nightkin. He typed some more notes on his terminal, but as he was going to save the entry, a code started typing itself onto the screen.

Data package transmit. Target: Securitron. Codename: Victor. Details: Revive body. Execute dig function. Data package: Received.

The screen went blank. The ghoul pressed the power button on his terminal, but it wouldn't start. He routed auxiliary power from the generator in his "cell" to the terminal. When he turned it on, he was in shock and disappointment to find that his diaries had been transferred to the terminal just outside his cell. Great.

_The Follower_

The doctor exited the tent he had been in. At this late if an hour he shouldn't have been awake, but he just couldn't sleep. He could hear the screams of citizens outside the fort. That's why they kept the doors shut. They were so old that if anyone tried to come in they would be hearing about it. He wasn't particularly a medical doctor either. He just knew how to treat wounds the best way possible. He experimented, learned through books, even watched Julie Farkas treat others. He looked up at the moon and wondered if there was anyone out in the Mojave who knew as much as he did. He powered up the terminal in the tower of the Old Mormon Fort and started logging in. The screen blacked out, and just before he tried rebooting it, a mysterious message scrolled across the screen.

Transmit data package. Send thru: Black Mountain Terminal 0042883. Send

The doctor quickly began hacking away at the terminal, trying to find out what was held within the data packet, but whenever he hacked one firewall, another showed up. He kept at it until, finally, the terminal sparked and died. That terminal would not be used again.

_The Cyberdog_

The dog lay at his master's feet. His head hurt so much he was almost unable to focus on the data package being transferred through him. It was a bunch of code. Mysterious, why would someone be sending it from all the way in Vegas, bouncing it off so many transmission points, all the way to a robot in Goodsprings? Of course, the cyberdog couldn't voice his opinion to his master. If the scientists before the Great War could only have figured out how to implant vocal strings of a human into a cyberdog before the bombs fell, he could tell his master, who could then dispatch a group to go looking for it. Another migraine shook the dog. He decided that now was not the best time to be thinking so hard, and went back to sleep.

_The Eyebot_

The eyebot sat, almost dead in the Mojave Express delivery shop, all but a few processors and motors running. It could barely think, couldn't even move, so it just let the data stream that had transmitted into it bounce off of his antennae and get to where it needed to go. It was dying, it needn't care about anything anymore.

_The Caravaneer_

The caravan owner sat in the bar drinking her troubles away. She had had a run of bad luck with her caravan business. Every caravan that was going through to the Mojave was held up at the Outpost because there had been a string of caravan attacks recently. Well, that and the fact that a bunch of mutant animals were taking up residence along the roads north and east. It was late in the evening, bar flies crawling in and out of the bar area. A soldier, a ranger to be exact stormed in, breaking the normal quiet of the bar, which was actually not normal for a bar.

"Someone's been shot! Ranger Ghost saw it in her scope," the soldier said, and Ranger Jackson was on him like a bloatfly on a rad-pool.

"Was it one of ours? WAS IT ONE OF OURS?!" Ranger Jackson asked.

"No, it looked like just a civilian. All the way in Goodsprings," the soldier replied.

"Well then, it's not in our jurisdiction. As you were," and the woman scoffed at that statement. Of course the NCR wouldn't get off of their asses long enough to even investigate someone being shot. The woman went back to her drink. Whiskey.

_The Nightkin_

The nightkin tended to her herd of bighorners. Damn nightstalkers kept getting into them, usually killing off one of the younglings. If she didn't do something about it soon, she would have to get an entirely new herd. Then she heard Leo. She didn't like listening to Leo. Always getting her into trouble, whispering evil things into her head. This time, though, Leo had something important to say. It shook her to the core. She began crying, which was highly abnormal for a nightkin. She could hardly believe Leo. She didn't want to listen, but she knew he was correct.

"JIMMY? LITTLE JIMMY? WHY'D YOU HAVE TO GET SHOT JIMMY?"

_The Courier_

The Courier woke up with a start. He was bound. He tried to get his hands free, but he was interrupted by a voice. He looked up, and saw the red-haired man with the mohawk. To his left was a man in a black and white checkered suit, and a black man who also wore the attire of the Khans. The red-haired man spoke up.

"Look who's waking up over here!" The man in the suit looked toward the Courier, then the other Khan spoke.

"We did what you asked, so pay up."

"You're crying in the rain pally," the suited man replied. The black Khan rolled his eyes and then asked the suited man a question.

"Would you get it over with?"

"Maybe Khans kill people without looking them in the face, but I ain't a fink, dig? Time to cash out," the suited man turned toward the Courier. He pulled a poker chip out of his jacket, something the Courier had expected to be a gun. "You've made your last delivery kid." He put the chip back in his coat, and returned with a gun, something the Courier wasn't expecting. "From where you're kneeling, it must feel like an 18-karat run of bad luck." He leveled the gun at the Courier's head. "Truth is, the game was rigged from the start." Then he pulled the trigger, and the Courier blacked out.

**A/N: Thank you guys for reading this. This is probably the longest thing I've ever worked on. It might be a while until the next update, seeing as how this took me about three weeks to put together. Reviews are most welcome! It gives me criticism to better serve you good people. So, until next time, good day.**


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